'Welfare robots' to ease burden in greying Japan

TOKYO — Robotic wheelchairs, mechanical arms and humanoid waiters are among the cutting-edge inventions on show at a robotics fair in Japan, a country whose population is ageing rapidly.To ease the burden in a nation with one of the world's highest life expectancies, engineers have come up with technologies to make life easier for the elderly and disabled, and their caregivers.A new robot wheelchair developed at Saitama University near Tokyo doesn't need to be propelled manually by the user or pushed by a caregiver but can instead automatically move besides a walking person."Imagine if you enter a store having somebody push your wheelchair," said one of the researchers, Yoshinori Kobayashi, assistant professor for information science and technology at the university."Your relationship with him or her may not look equal to a store clerk or onlookers. You would fail to be treated as an independent person."The wheelchair is fitted with a camera and sensors that detect both the caregiver and obstacles ahead to safely guide the vehicle, which can also be stopped or overridden with a joystick by the person in the wheelchair.Kobayashi, pointing at a shortage of caregivers in Japan, said the team is working on a system that would allow more than one automated wheelchair to follow a caregiver at the same time.Another innovation to make life easier for the disabled is the "RAPUDA" robotic arm, a "portable manipulator" being developed by Woo-Keun Yoon of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology.Patients who are largely paralysed but can move some part of their body, such as a fingertip, a toe, or their neck, will be able to control the arm and utilise its reach and strength.The arm can be attached to wheelchairs, tables and other objects and extended to up to one metre (three feet) to pick up objects, helping improve quality of life for the disabled, said Yoon."It's important that you can have tea when you want to, or pick up what you like in a shop," Yoon said. "Otherwise you have to ask

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